Inevitability
by studio
Summary: 10 years after Edward disappears from Bella's life and breaks her heart, and his own, Alice Cullen decides that her brother made a mistake. Rose agrees. Jasper agrees. Esme agrees. Edward agrees. Destiny agrees. The question is: does Bella? E/B


**Inevitability  
Piece 1. Sacrifice  
**(Edward)

**Part 1**

My sister had lived all her second life with a frozen heart.

We all had; turned to stone, the moment of our death stretched stagnant and unending, forever to linger between living and dying. That one precious moment before all was turned over and the peace of death and eternal slumber began; that one precious moment after blood stilled in veins and life fled.

That one precious moment was ours. Forever. Held fast in supernatural suspension; the reality was as cold and unyielding as our petrified flesh.

But Rosalie...

Rosalie's heart had been splintered into shards of fractured ice; she was not ready for the moment she was to live for eternity.

The last memories of her past life were tragic and dark. A level beyond sinister. The love of her life – of that life, anyway – stole away her fairytale and happy ending; gave into the greed and lust that made him a monster, rotted out the soul he never deserved, to lead his fair fiancé into a destiny that would forever torture her.

She'd had her revenge.

But he'd won.

Because he'd broken my darling sister by leaving her to die instead of killing her.

Left her lingering between life and death, bleeding in a grimy, dim lit footpath fit for no bride, when her dreams and hopes and heart all nurtured her budding maternity. At that time motherhood was the be-all of her future; still everything she looked forward to. Like the most amazing fairytale dream without any of the gravity of reality to keep her anchored; she was yet to be kept awake all hours of the night by cries, yet to have her favourite dress ruined by vomit, yet to ruin her hands with water from washing nappies.

Her expectations had been like the dreams any girl's imagination could conjure up without anything to ground them; to her being a mother was the greatest thing imaginable. There could be no higher elation.

Her moment was paused frozen there: at the peak of maternal eagerness and desire.

She'd 'stopped' when the ability to fathom any downsides to motherhood and children was out of her capacity. There had been nothing greater to her than the prospect of raising her very own family.

Her lifeless, barren womb was the bane of her eternal existence.

Rosalie, in all the years upon years that I'd lived by her side, had always been the broken one amongst us.

Though she could be harsh and superficial and downright horrible at times, she was always the one we guarded.

Families look after their injured.

And Emmett, beneath all the laughter and cheer, had an ache gathered within too. For all that he loved her he could never heal her. And that had him shattered. He'd sacrifice anything and everything in the world for her happiness. Because he loved her. And her cold, frozen heart meant everything to him. But there was nothing in the world he could do for that one wish of hers. Not even his love for her could create the opportunity for him to make any such sacrifice.

He'd take the chance if he ever got it.

I had.

I'd sacrificed eternal love.

Bella Swan would live.

Grow, mature and love someone who could grow old with her.

_Though she'd never love someone who loved her more than me._

And she'd die.

Eventually.

And her soul would be safe; and she'd return to the home the soulless monster I was had been banished from.

But I was willing to lurk in the shadows of the world, between the human world we so carefully gypsy-footed through and the sinister, secret world of the phantom creatures that plagued their nightmares forever, until the very end of time if... If she ended up where she belonged I was more than willing.

She'd be nearly 30. 27, actually, and as the leaves began to turn gold with the touch of autumn, she'd soon be turning 28.

Ten years.

Until I'd first introduced myself to her in biology a decade didn't seem so long. What is ten years to one who was to linger – we weren't really alive enough to live – forever?

It's nothing.

Nothing but a small moment.

Time was conveniently insignificant.

Until you found reason to cherish every moment.

Then time serves as a catalyst for your personal miracle.

Those months with her had slowed my world.

Every moment savoured, blissfully slow. Cherished.

But we weren't safe.

My world and my kind would have twisted her soul and flayed her spirit; chained her to a malevolent, ethereal world spawned of the darkest kinds of sins. This world would have crushed her down and poisoned more than just her blood; broken her sweet humanity and stripped her bare of it.

I hadn't hurt since I lived a life nearly forgotten.

I'd shared second hand experiences of pain, passed down through the subconscious minds of my family. Esme still mourned her baby son, lost to his human mother. Carlisle grieved with her. Rosalie mourned the son she'd never have; and Emmett was hollowed out and hurting over her broken pieces. Jasper shared pain second hand also; but it was reflected by memories impossible to bury, old wounds always splitting open, anew. And Alice. I didn't know what caused her sorrows – but there were reasons she would sit at home and recite the New Testament, chants silent to all bar me echoed in foreign languages.

And tearing myself away from the most beautiful part of all my phantasmal life had torn me through to ripped shreds. The torrent of pain had been so powerful, so full of the most devastating agony that it's a wonder the force of it all didn't jolt my cold, undead heart back into life.

The past ten years had ticked over like time was paralysed – the first century of my existence had spun by faster in all its entirety than the most recent decade.

But it was worth it.

For her.

Because I could do for Bella what Emmett couldn't do for Rosalie.

Without our world infringing upon her life we couldn't endanger her. We couldn't cause her fear. Pain. Death.

Worse.

And I'd sacrificed the best thing that had ever happened to me – reciprocal love – because I loved her so much that even if she hated me and cursed my very name and existence, as long as she _lived_ happily and free, blessed with humanity and warmth that I could never offer... I could endure.

Because she deserved it.

And I loved her enough to let her have it.

For a while I couldn't quite keep away.

My visits were secret and routine.

She seemed to sense my presence though. A skipped heart beat and a sharp breath, the stilling of movement, gave her away. And before that breath could leave her lungs I'd be gone again.

And then in the night I'd return; a guardian to watch over a sleeping angel; and on the nights when filtering through to watch her sleep was my second visit for the day my name always tumbled from her lips.

When she'd gone some time without thinking she'd seen or heard me for a while she slept poorly, or she'd stay up all night at a desk scattered over with paper, falling asleep midsentence in unnecessary extra drafts of already perfect essays. And it was so painful to see that sometimes I'd purposely linger by her window in the morning so she'd sleep better by that night.

The mumbles changed after several months to angry and alarmed whispers of "Jacob", but her tone eventually grew fond, and I knew the werewolf would smell evidence of my reoccurring presence if I continued to return.

Because of their strengthening friendship I was reduced to stalking her through Face Book. That Mike kid's account had been easy enough to hack to gain access to hers. In four years she changed her photo twice – a grand total of six old ones, all from her last year in Forks, making up her only album. And I watched from sidelines thousands of miles away as she and Jacob Black dated on and off for years – though it appeared too much of a struggle for their relationship to blossom into fruition. I'd learned through patch-worked pieces of information that she'd earned a scholarship to Yale.

She'd always loved Literature and English. I'd been surprised to discover she opted to study commerce and international relations; neither suited any aspiration I ever imagined my Bella would develop.

But she did well, and I was proud.

I hadn't seen her since I lurked, hidden in the stage-ceiling behind blaring lights, at the graduation ceremony when she earned her Masters. She'd looked as beautiful as ever. Utterly breathtaking, even though she'd kept her eyes on the floor – still the shy girl she'd been all those years ago. What I would have given to leap thirty feet down and hold her then and there. Touch her warm skin, caress the frail lines of her body and kiss her soft mouth. But I'd already sacrificed everything I could to make sure she was safe; and to give into what I wanted would be going backward on all of that. So I left. And that had been the last I saw of Isabella Swan.

Four years ago, now.

I felt compelled to see her again.

And I would be.

Soon.

Alice and Jasper had cut their 14th honeymoon short and when they arrived I'd been confronted with the translation of the French dictionary into Swahili in Alice's mind.

And when she gave up on that nonsense she revealed the vision that sent them home: Bella Swan, moving into the very town we'd decided to settle into two years ago.

It wasn't the first time it had happened.

We'd all enrolled in Yale before she won the scholarship. We'd avoided going to an opera in Moscow several years before when Alice had foreseen her seated in the private booth beside ours.

Fate seemed to be drawing her back to us, Esme had insisted.

I was beginning to agree.

The choice had been mine: we would stay or go, because my family all understood pain, and families care for their hurt and injured.

I'm not sure they were genuinely surprised when I decided to stay.

If we left, she'd find us again four years later in Provence, but those four years would hurt her, promised Alice, warning of a coming danger she couldn't quite see, that would almost certainly be more menacing to Bella than to any one of us.

In this case I wasn't willing to bet against my little sister.

Six days after Alice and Jasper had returned Bella Swan would unknowingly re-enter our world.

Today. Or tomorrow. Alice's vision had been a little hazy; we'd been away from Bella for too long to allow for perfect clarity anymore.

And at some point in the following four years something else would join us, but we'd be ready and waiting, doing what we do best until then: lingering.


End file.
